Glück auf

Miners' greeting Glückauf with hammer and pick symbol above the entrance of an old mine building in the southern Ruhr

Glück Auf: motto in the coat of arms of the mining town of Tsumeb, Namibia

Glückauf (alternative spelling Glück auf; also, as an exclamation: Glück auf!) is the traditional German miners' greeting. It describes the hope of the miners: "es mögen sich Erzgänge auftun" ("may lodes [of ore] be opened") which is short for "Ich wünsche Dir Glück, tu einen neuen Gang auf" ("I wish you luck in opening a new lode"), because, when mining for ore, without prospecting, no-one could predict with certainty whether the miners' work would lead to a reward.[1] The greeting also expressed the desire that miners would return safely from the mine after their shift.

Today it is still a common form of greeting in the Ore Mountains region of eastern Germany.

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The greeting emerged in the Saxon Ore Mountains towards the end of the 16th century,[2] when the miners still entered and left the mines on foot using ladders (Fahrten) or man engines (Fahrkunst). That meant that, after a typical 10-hour shift, the miner often had a challenging and dangerous 2 hours of climbing ahead of him, something that they believed needed a degree of luck to negotiate safely. If he slipped (fahrtlos), he fell down the shaft.[3] The result was that at that time (16th to 18th centuries) fatal accidents were very common, and not just when entering or leaving the mine. It was often the case that friends on the next shift, who had been greeted on the way out, were left in the mine.

By 1890 at the latest the greeting was widespread among German-speaking speleologists (cave explorers) and is still the most common form of greeting in that community today. It is particularly commonly used when entering the cave.[4]